Emily Dickinson: Autumn

I always think of Emily's autumn poem this time of year. You know the one, which ends:


The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

Can't you just picture her in her long white dress, primping before the mirror with a mischievous smile? Not to be outdone by the dazzling colors of the New England autumn landscape, she reaches into her jewelry box for a favorite pin. I always imagine it as ruby red or golden amber. 

We Get To Love One Another

I've been on a long marching road of work, more work, and a little more work recently. I've given up trying to disentangle the thread of the kinds of "work" I do, some of it paid, a lot of it not, some of it fulfilling and satisfying, the kind of work that can almost feel like play, and some of it just one foot in front of the other duty. I've been trying instead to remember some of the many blessings involved in work, such as: I've been given it to do, and as long as I have health and life I get the chance to do it faithfully and lovingly, even the parts of it that can feel like sheer drudgery.

One of the things that blesses my heart no end is that we've been put on this earth not just to breathe and exist, not just to eat and live and love and laugh and worship (though I'm so thankful we get to do all of those things) but so we can love each other. Isn't that amazing? We get to love one another. Some days it's easy, some days it's hard, but it's part of God's call to us, God's gift to us. We get to love one another. Wow.

Daybook: J.I. Packer ("Mercy from first to last")

Just came across this quote I jotted in my journal a couple of months ago, and thought I would take a page out of the daybook to share it here:

"Even when (the Christian) cannot see the why and wherefore of God's dealings, he knows that there is love in and behind them and so he can rejoice always; even when, humanly speaking, things are going wrong, he knows that the true story of his life, when known, will prove to be 'mercy from first to last' -- and he is content."  ~J.I.Packer

Elephants and Pluto and November....oh my!

It's been a crazy-busy few weeks of regular work and school with some new things coming down the pike in our schedules.

Last week the sweet girl finished up her fall Irish dance class and thoroughly enjoyed trick or treating, dressed up as our town (complete with clock tower hat). This week she's finishing up a paper on Pluto (to her great surprise, after doing all her reading and research, she discovered she agrees with its "demotion" to dwarf planet status).

I've been working on an article proposal for a children's magazine which has had me reading about the fascinating world of elephants, most specifically elephant intelligence. The books have intrigued S. to the point that she thinks elephants may be her next learning craze, the Apollo space mission craze having momentarily died down. Hooray for learning trails!

In writing life news: I'm continuing to do a lot of web content writing, and I'm grateful it's there, but I'm really excited because I've just been offered a contract as a youth curriculum writer with a Sunday School publishing company. I'll be contracted to write lesson plans for teaching various Bible passages to 7-12th graders. It's a neat looking approach to teaching the Scriptures (incorporating interactive and kinesthetic approaches) and I'm happy that the company has brought me on board to do some projects. Right now I am praying for the time and creativity to do the lesson planning justice -- my first two deadlines are in December.

And in teaching life news: I just started working with my Old Testament class (online, for an adult ed. institute I sometimes teach for) and have contracted to teach the Anglican Ethos course I used to teach online at the sem this spring. That last was a happy and unexpected surprise, as the course hasn't been offered in quite a while -- I've only taught it as an independent study for the past several years.

Throw in homeschooling, afterschool arts, church school, missions committee work, and several other things I'm not immediately remembering, and this has turned out to be one of the busiest autumns I can remember in years. It's all good, but sometimes tiring.

We're struggling mightily with an income shortfall this month (we've had months it's been tight, and things have finally caught up with us, most especially my lack of steady work this fall) so while I am praising God for new work opportunities in winter and spring, I know it's going to be a while (January - March) before most of my work outside of web content writing generates anything. We are trying to find ways to continue to pay down our debt without defaulting while still doing things like eating, keeping the lights on and gas in the car, and finding ways to pay for D's meds. All of this would be tremendously anxiety producing if I let myself stop and focus on it, but it's so much easier to keep opening my hands and looking up and saying thank you. Plus there's only so much you can do....when you really can't pay bills, you just can't pay them, and you move on and keep working as best you can. You keep your eyes on Jesus and trust him for what you lack. You also trust that you will meet patience and understanding and kindness even in places where you don't expect it, and that somehow there will be enough for the day. And not just "enough" materially, but "enough" in all the ways that matter.

Time for a Lovely Stop

The sweet girl and I were taking a walk the other day when she came to a sudden halt on the sidewalk. "Mom, stop! Look at that!" she exclaimed.

I looked, and realized that a beautiful autumn tree, a brightly colored maple, is what had brought her to a standstill.  I stopped too, and stood there for a moment just gazing at its beauty.

She sighed. "Sometimes," she said, "you just need to make a lovely stop."

Amen to that! 

Failure is Not an Option. But It's Also a Necessity...

I didn't meant to disappear off the blog for so long, but it's been a busy few weeks. School and ministry schedules have resumed their full autumn pace, and I've been working much longer hours than usual doing web content writing. What that means is that I'm usually so tired when bedtime comes (and it seems to come later and later!) that all I want to do is fall over. More time at the computer is usually not something I relish!

I see my last post was about Apollo 13, which makes me smile. The space geekiness has continued at our house since then. I ended up reading Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger's book Apollo 13 (formerly called Lost Moon, the book on which the film was based) and passed it on to my eager 12 year old. She is about two-thirds of the way through it now. It's turned out to be a good, challenging read for her -- it's worked as supplemental science reading but also provided some good examples of various types of writing she's been analyzing and working on in her Writing With Skill curriculum in the past 1 plus years. Biographical sketches, descriptions of scientific processes, different types of history writing -- it's all there.

Since we've all been in NASA mode, I've found myself drifting back to the space shelves at the library, and I'm currently reading Gene Kranz' Failure is Not an Option. Kranz was the flight director during Apollo 13, but this book contains his memoirs from the Mercury missions onward. It's an interesting read, intelligent and fascinating, though a little less finely crafted than the Lovell/Kluger collaboration. Kluger was able to bring a journalistic sensibility to the Apollo 13 narrative that gives it a more edge-of-your-seat readability. Kranz, while a good writer, doesn't always have the ability to shape a narrative quite as smoothly, and he sometimes falls into a lot of techno-speak (though there's a helpful glossary) and flights of fond memory over fellow co-workers. Still, it's an interesting behind the scenes look at NASA's early days.

One of the things that has interested me the most in the first few chapters is what could feel like a discrepancy (but I don't think is) between his title and the reality of those early missions. "Failure is not an option..." is a line associated with Kranz; his character says it in the film. In fact, he never said those words exactly that we know of, but adopted it as the title of his book after the film because he thought it summed up NASA's approach to space flight so well. And it does, in a sense. Ultimate failure certainly never felt like an option. The hundreds and thousands of people who dedicated their time and talents to the American space program of the 1960s were good at keeping their ultimate goal in view; they were courageous and persevered, sometimes under great odds, to accomplish that goal.

On the other hand, they did sometimes fail. A lot. Especially in the early years. Sometimes they didn't know precisely what they were doing. Sometimes they knew a little of what they needed to know, but had to figure out the rest the hard way.  By failing, at least in the short term, they were able to learn what they needed to learn to go forward, little by little. Sometimes small failures lead to creativity, problem-solving, and renewed determination.

Storyteller's Workshop: Apollo 13

Last night I decided to watch the Ron Howard directed film Apollo 13. I think it was the first time I’d seen it since it opened in theaters back in 1995. I’ve wanted to see it again, partly to preview for our twelve year old. She has a great love of all things connected to outer space and a fascination with the Apollo missions especially, but I wanted to check out the film’s intensity level.

I’m not sure why I chose to watch it late last night. I think I just needed to tumble into a good story, and I remembered this was a good one. And indeed it was.

The Story

If you’re not familiar with the film, Apollo 13 is based on the real life story of the Apollo 13 mission to the moon in 1970. Two missions had already landed men on the moon, and by 1970, strangely enough, the space program’s success was becoming “old hat” for the American people. So much so that when Commander Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks in the film) and his crewmates Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) transmitted their first broadcast back to earth, on day three in space, none of the networks even bothered to show it.

However, newscasters were soon showing everything about the mission they possibly could. That’s because when they were 173,000 miles from earth (let that number sink in) one of their oxygen tanks exploded, crippling the command module and forcing the men to move to the lunar landing module. They used it as a “lifeboat” until they could find a way, in conjunction with a lot of help from mission control back on earth, to get home. This proved highly problematic in all sorts of ways, as the film dramatically presents.

Story-telling takeaways:

A true story of near catastrophe and ultimate triumph would seem to present you with a dramatic story-shape that you don’t need to tinker with very much. Still, I think the writers and director did a great job of bringing out the dramatic tension in some very creative ways.

We all know the tried and true shape of a dramatic narrative, where someone starts in one direction toward a goal and then gets thwarted. There’s an obstacle in their way, and they have to find out a way around it (or under it or over it!) to accomplish their goal. One thing I love about Apollo 13 is that the highly worthy goal that our heroes start toward is never accomplished, and yet the goal they do end up accomplishing, which seems so much more ordinary, turns out to pull on their strength and heroism in even deeper ways.

The change of their trajectory – from moonward to homeward – marks a major shift in the goal of the story and in the inner orientation of the main characters. Up until now, we’ve been with them as they’ve excitedly trained to fly this spacecraft and land on the moon. When it becomes clear that “we’ve lost the moon,” as Lovell says rather bleakly, when they realize that they can no longer pursue the lunar landing because they will need every ounce of their power to turn around and get home, we are momentarily deflated. The film pays tribute to that by giving Lovell a moment as he looks down at the lunar surface and imagines what it would be like to step out and fulfill his dream. Then we can practically see the dawning realization on all of their faces as it occurs to them that surviving and returning to earth is the new goal, and it’s going to be much harder than anything they ever anticipated about the flight.

Sometimes your character’s original goal does not turn out to be what really needs accomplishing. The heart of your story, and your character’s deepest desires, may not be revealed until deep into the plot.

As storytellers, we don’t have to jump up and down and point when this happens. We can find small but profound ways to indicate the “turn” that is taking place in the outward and inner narratives. Again, I love how Apollo 13 does this. Early in the film, it showed us Lovell looking up at the night sky. He sees the moon, a place he has already orbited (on an earlier flight) so a place he’s begun to know, but one that still fascinates him. He longs to go there again and this time to step out on it surface. He holds his thumb up and moves it back and forth so that it blots out the moon. So tiny really, so far away, yet real, and a place he longs to be.

The visual sticks with us because we see him do the same thing again, but this time in reverse. When they are in the spacecraft near the moon, he looks out the window and sees the earth. He holds up his thumb and blots it out and then moves his thumb and reveals it again. So tiny really, so far away, yet real, and a place he longs to be. In fact, the longing to get back to earth suddenly feels far deeper and more urgent than the push for the moon (it helps that we’ve seen him in the context of his loving family). And the fact that he can so easily block out the earth with his thumb heightens the tension, because we realize just how faraway it is.

A tiny picture, a small repeated gesture – that’s all it takes. We know without words (though the script writers give him some words about it later) that we’re now focusing on the homeward goal. Plan A is gone. Plan B is what matters. And it turns out that Plan B is the heart of our story.

Besides the change in story trajectory, Apollo 13 also does a great job of providing us with glimpses of secondary characters and their motivations and longings. One of my favorite ways it does this is through the character of Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise), the command module pilot who trained for the mission and then was scratched from the first string just a few days prior to lift-off because he’d been exposed to the measles and they couldn’t risk him getting sick while in space. The irony of and perhaps the providence behind that decision unfolds as the film progresses. This is, interestingly, one of the places where the filmmakers used creative license by creating an even larger role for Mattingly than he had in real-life. While he was an important member of the ground crew that figured out how to get the astronauts home, the film played up his contribution (conflating several real life people’s contributions into one) to emphasize how deeply a part of this mission he still felt, and how invested in the outcome. The choice to strengthen and use his character in that way was a terrific choice.

Creative prompts and exercises:

• Think of a story idea where the initial goal or quest seems very straightforward. Create an obstacle that blocks your character from that goal. Then instead of the character getting around the obstacle and proceeding toward the original goal, thwart them entirely and provide them with a new goal.

Note: your mission, as a writer, is to change the story trajectory entirely, not in a way that feels like it’s cheating (as though you’re not delivering on what the story initially appeared to be about) but in a way that deepens our understanding of the main character and what he really wants. It may be that the character himself does not realize what he really wants until that moment, or realizes that his first goal, no matter how worthy, is still of secondary importance to this new goal. Lovell really wanted to get to the moon. I’m sure it broke his heart, in some ways, that he never achieved that dream. But in a moment of crisis, he realized he wanted other things more: to continue to live, to get back to the life and family he loved and to the earth that was his home.

You can try this exercise with a dramatic or heroic quest or you can try it on a smaller, more domestic canvas. Lots of characters in literature, even the ones who aren’t heading out on big outward adventures, come to a deeper realization of what they really desire. Lizzy Bennett thinks she wants to make a “good” marriage, but her understanding of what a good marriage constitutes changes and deepens as Pride and Prejudice unfolds. So much so that we see her turn down two marriage proposals, seemingly thwarted in her desire to wed, before she finally gets to a place where she is ready to accept one!

Your story may cover vast outer distances or small inner ones, but in either case, changing the character’s direction and goal can add layers of richness to the story.  

Offering (An Original Poem)

This morning
I awoke
wanting to give you roses --
wanting to lay beauty
at your feet
in thanksgiving
and awe
for all you've given me.

Sometimes
it strikes me as strange
that I long to give
flowers
to the One
who made the fields
but then I realize --
you also made me
and made my heart
long to give
and made my eyes
for drinking beauty.

May my life
be filled
with giving moments
and with roses --
may each small act
of patience, kindness,
be a stem,
each loving,
forgiving moment
a smooth petal,
each bend in the road
I meet with joy
and hope and peace
a chance to bend
and fling
another tiny,
lovely offering
to the King of everything.

~EMP (2012/2014) 

Sometimes Specificity Matters

“Name the Tudors we’ve been discussing,” I asked S., my hand hovering over the white board to record the names she gave me.

Quickly she responded with, “Henry VIII, Mary, Elizabeth, Edward.”

“Great!” I said. “Now put them in order.”

“I did.”

I started to correct her, then realized that she had named Henry’s three children in order…by age.

“Ah,” I said. “Put them in order of their reigns.”

She chuckled and said “Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth.” Right again, and a great reminder to me that specificity can be important when asking questions.

The Roar on the Other Side

The seventh day of school found me wanting to shake things up a bit by adding some poetry into the mix. I’m pretty much always wanting to add in poetry (reading it, writing it) but these days S’ schedule is so packed, it can be hard to do. I hit upon the idea of tying a writing exercise into eating, and we did it over lunch.

I’ve long been excited about Suzanne U. Clark’s book The Roar on the Other Side: A Guide for Student Poets. I didn’t buy it, originally, as a homeschool book. I bought it because I consider myself a student poet. I’ve read it and enjoyed its prompts, meditations on the poetic arts, and great collection of poems for several years. When it dawned on me that it might be a good year to incorporate some of it into our home learning, I got quite excited.

One of the first “stepping stone” exercises that Clark includes in her first chapter, which has to do with the importance of noticing/seeing, is to write a journal entry describing an ordinary piece of fruit. I love these kinds of exercises that compel you to look at something “common” that you’ve seen a thousand times, but to look at it thoughtfully, slowly, and carefully, using all your senses. That’s what S. and I did at the lunch table with a peach today. We called it “mindful eating,” and by the time we were done, we not only each had a journal entry and a poem draft (S. really wanted to go on and play with writing a poem based on her descriptive notes) but we’d thoroughly and completely enjoyed all the juicy slices of that peach.

I’d almost forgotten that we had a small peach tree in my backyard for a number of years when I was growing up. Smelling and holding the peach, I let my mind wander to associations, and suddenly I recalled the golden color of the knobby bark and the smell of ripened peaches in the grass (we never seemed to harvest many, since the squirrels beat us to them).

I love how such a thoughtful exercise can be so many things at once: a break for hearts and minds in the middle of a busy day, a lesson in observing and writing, nourishing time spent together, food for the soul.

Patchwork Post (Homesick for Charis, Loving LOTR)

I'm tired. D. is traveling yet again regarding care issues for his mom, something that continues to weigh on our hearts and minds. S. is struggling some in ways she hasn't in a long time. School is taking up more time than I remembered it did, and while that's not a bad thing, I'm having a hard time remembering how to fit everything else I do into the cracks and crevices of our schooling life. I also seem to be coming down with something that is making me feel miserable and draggy.

In the midst of all this, I am missing Charis, the central country of my fictional work-in-progress. D. and I spent a lot of time this summer, sometimes even during our most tired times, working on history and geography. He's marvelous at helping me world-build, and if I wasn't feeling so tired, I think I would be writing a lot right now. Charis and its neighboring kingdoms and their complex history certainly are a big part of my thoughts at the moment. It's finding time and creativity and just plain energy to try to convert those thoughts to paper that's feeling difficult.

Most of my writing time at the moment is taken up with web content, and while I am thankful that writing educational/job profiles and product descriptions (as I can get them) are helping to bring in some necessary income, I am beginning to feel like if I write one more detailed description of a pair of hiking boots or explain one more time how one moves from an RN to BSN degree, I am going to either burst into laughter or tears. My push to accomplish more web content work came in a week when I discovered I wasn't going to be doing teaching assistant work for the seminary this fall (due to low enrollment) and when I had an essay I worked on in the summer turned down by a journal that I had real hopes might want to publish it. So I know some of the frustration level I'm feeling about the "floor mopping" kinds of writing I'm doing (and trying to do with love, since it's part of the way God provides) is part of a larger piece of frustration over a lack of opportunity to do more of the kinds of work that I feel more passionate about.

Mostly I am feeling grumpy and inept. There. That's honest! 

Lots of good things to be thankful for right now, including a good Sunday School kickoff yesterday, plus the ordinary blessings which are never all that ordinary really. Not to mention the fact that we're less than a hundred pages from the end of The Lord of the Rings, our first read-through as a family, and a powerful re-read for me this time through. Thank you, J.R.R. Tolkien, for the fortifying nourishment of your narrative.

Arrow Prayers

This has been my day for finding things I wrote quite awhile ago. Besides the poem snippet from seven years ago (see below) this afternoon I also found a collection of arrow prayers I put together sometime last year.

I wrote these thinking they might encourage S., who often struggles with thinking she's not "really" praying because she's so easily distracted during prayer (no matter how often I tell her that distraction is sometimes just part of prayer, and the Lord graciously understands that!).I don't remember if I ever introduced these to her or not, though it may be time to try that again, as she is struggling a lot again with the notion of what prayer really is and if God is really there and really hears us.

At any rate, in the midst of some of my own tired discouragement (the last couple of weeks have been very up and down for me, and the last couple of days particularly hard) I was very glad to find these and read through them again.

Tonight my heart was especially drawn to these two arrow prayers:

"Help me to want you more than I want anything else, God."

and

"Thank you, Jesus, that in you, everything holds together." 

Amen.

Old Poem, Old Photo

S. was cleaning her room this afternoon and needed a magazine holder for her many copies of Nature Friends and Pockets. I didn’t have a new one, but obligingly moved some homeschooling magazines and old Vegetarian Times to give her one of my old holders. In the process, I discovered a tiny notebook where I’d jotted some rough drafts of poems in 2007.

It’s fun to come across snippets of verse you jotted seven plus years ago. I remembered none of these poems and pieces of poems clearly, though the genesis of the ideas or a turn of phrase occasionally came back to me as I glanced through the pages. Most of them are in nowhere near sharing stage, but one of them made me smile (for a reason I think you’ll see in a moment) and I thought I’d share it here. It’s untitled.

I found my grandfather

at twenty-three.

Twenty-three, both him and me.

I that young in bone and skin,

he that young inside, within

a small glass frame, a photo gray.

He still is twenty-three today,

smiling, so serene and fine,

while I’ve moved on to thirty-nine.

                                    EMP (1/9/07)

What makes me smile about this little poem are all the layers. I really did find a small photograph of my grandfather, aged 23, when I was 23 myself. I was at my aunt’s house, looking through boxes of old pictures, and I remember how wonderful that felt, to have that kind of “connection” with a man who was so important in our family, but whom I never had the chance to meet. He died six years before I was born.

I keep that photo of my 23 year old grandfather on my bureau. And I do recall the day I picked it up and realized that the smiling face in the photo was still as young as the day I’d put it in the frame, while I’d aged sixteen years in the meantime. Now another seven years have gone by, and the layers continue. I’ve passed on to the age of 46, and my young and smiling grandfather is still peering out at me from the frame. He was born in 1901, so it’s been 90 years since that photograph was taken.

First Day of Seventh Grade!

Year Eight in the homeschool journey begins! Yes, I know it's Labor Day, but we're starting late this year due to travel, and D. planned to be working today anyway. The sweet girl and I agreed we'd rather get a jump on things and get in a whole week, so here we are on a Monday morning.

I love the first day of school traditions we've put in place over the years: first day muffins, pictures, hand print (such a laugh now to see those little hand prints from earlier years!), new Scripture verse CD. For the first time ever this year, we listened to a Scripture CD that wasn't from the Harrow family, as we finished all the volumes in Sing the Word. Our first listen to the first verse in "Songs of Courage" earned a thumbs up from us: we liked the music a lot. And of course Jeremiah 33:3 is a wonderful verse: "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know." Seems like a very appropriate verse for the beginning of a new season of our lives!

Let's not forget the new Ticonderoga pencils, one of which is being used even as I write. The sweet girl is tackling language arts this morning with great gusto.

The years seem to pass more swiftly the older I grow, and one way I know that's true is how quickly this day seems to roll around each year. Thank you, Lord, for another new beginning.

"Teach Us to Number Our Days..."

Home yet again. This past journey was very different than last week's relaxing time, and if we could have ordered the two trips differently, we surely would have. But life has a way of happening unscheduled! And it was very important that we got to Virginia to see D's mom before fall schedules are upon us in full.

I am so thankful for so many things as I look back on those exhausting few days. Most of all, I am thankful that D's mom is currently in the respite section (being moved to rehab soon) of the assisted living area, and that she is being more fully evaluated. She was in need of care and attention, even more than we realized. Her physical, mental, and emotional decline have continued at a frightening pace. I had not seen her since last November, and even with the knowledge of her difficulties and with what D. shared with me after her saw her a few weeks ago, I was shocked at how much she had aged in those relatively few months. On the other hand, there are still a lot of moments when she is perfectly cogent and very much herself, with that mischievous smile peeking through and even a bit of what I think I would term healthy snark over her current situation. She's not terribly happy about being where she is, but she also seems to recognize on some level that she really needs the care.

I spent most of the days there working my way through the piles of paperwork that had accumulated over the past few weeks and months -- junk mail, bills, notices from the retirement community, etc. It was my self-appointed task to find and sort all that I could so that it all made some sense for my dear husband, who is her medical and financial power of attorney. He and his sister were in various meetings with the lawyer, social worker, accountant, etc., and it seemed to be the best way I could help. Since Grandma has sometimes taken to putting papers and cards and keys in places where you least expect to find them, I discovered that the sweet girl's keen eyes were very helpful. She prowled the shelves and some small drawers and discovered some things that were missing or that we otherwise needed to know about, so I was thankful for that. We also had a few moments of just sheer grace in terms of things "showing up" right when they needed to.

I was also thankful for how beautifully the sweet girl handled the trip. It was not easy for any of us to see D's mother struggling so much, and there were lots of times of stressful waiting, missed signals, places we needed to be, sitting around and talking through things ("boring adult talk" as she terms it) and paper shuffling. S. was a trooper. She had a few times where her stress got the better of her, but then we all did. Mostly it was good, growing trip which she handled with much grace. Even under the circumstances, she was so glad for time with her grandmother, aunt, and great aunt, as were we all.

I find myself not just tired and grateful today, as I play catch-up on a host of household chores and try to think my way through organizing for the new school year (that should have started this week but instead will start next week) but realizing anew how precious our lives are. Even if we're given threescore and ten years of relatively good health and sound mind, it's such a short amount of time really. I found myself renewing my heart's commitment to living as healthfully, fully, and passionately as I can in whatever years I'm allotted. So much living, loving, kingdom work, creative work, I still long to do. As Psalm 90:12 reminds us, "teach us to number our days," dear Lord, "that we may gain a heart of wisdom."  Or as it says in the Message: "Oh! Teach us to live well! Teach us to live wisely and well!"

Of Cottonwoods and Mallorn Trees

We had a beautiful long weekend in Erie. We spent almost every moment we could outdoors, from drives on the peninsula to shore time by the lake to playtime on the sweet girl's favorite sandy playground to s'mores around our trailer-side firepit at the campgrounds in the evening. We also got to see wonderful friends for dinner on two successive nights. Despite some stressed moments (we continue to be very concerned about D's mom's deteriorating health and will be making another trip soon to see her) and our usual sparse accommodations in the trailer (made even more rustic this year since they'd opted to improve the bathroom facilities but take out the shower) we really had a lovely time.

One of my favorite parts of the beautiful flora and fauna on Presque Isle are the cottonwood trees that seem to grow everywhere. These are tall, beautiful trees that rustle with a hushed music in the frequently strong winds. It was the sweet girl who pointed out that the back of the green leaves seemed to shimmer with silver -- the leaves are a kind of greenish-gray. Coupled with the few eager leaves already turning yellow in anticipation of the autumn, there was a lovely silver-gold quality to some of the trees. It made us think of the Mallorn trees of Lothlorien, and S. and I ended up calling them Lothlorien trees every time we traipsed under another stand of them near the beach.

I love seeing S. learn to love Tolkien. We're nearing the end of The Two Towers, and every time Tolkien stops to describe the phase of the moon and the quality/timing of its light, she practically shivers with delight. I love that our daughter, so like us and yet so uniquely her own self, loves him as much for his scientific accuracy as she does for his poetry. She is so impressed that here, at last, is an author who cares about those kinds of details!

Reading Round-Up: August (and the "Slim Little Volumes")

I’ve been reading a lot of small books lately. The smallness describes their physical size, not necessarily their content. It’s interesting how reviewers often pick up on a book’s diminutive size as if surprised that a book with relatively few pages and a thin spine can contain something of worth. During my ten years of regular reviewing, I know I sometimes lapsed into the phrase “slim little volume,” which I now recognize as lazy writing, a sort of shorthand to express surprise that writing gems can be found in such little packages. It’s a strange sort of assessment. All we have to do is look to the world of humanity to understand how strange it is, since sometimes absolute dynamos (William Wilberforce, Mother Theresa, just to name two) are small in stature.

It’s possible, I suppose, that I’m drifting to smaller books in my non-fiction reading time because in fiction-world, I am still enamored of the work of P.D. James. My twelve year old sometimes gets an almost pained look on her face when she sees me bring home another James novel from the library. “Another P.D. James?” she’ll say a little skeptically, or sometimes just “that’s a loooonng book.” They are long books, full of slow, detailed prose, but I’m enjoying them immensely. I haven’t raced through James’ canon the way I raced through Deborah Crombie’s a couple of years ago. I seem to need breaks, sometimes of a few months or more, between outings. But when I get onto a P.D. James kick, I usually don’t stop with one. And I’m starting to prematurely mourn that I only have a few volumes left before I run out. I’m up to The Murder Room, which means that her detective Adam Dalgleish has actually embarked upon a romance, something I’m still a bit ambivalent about.

Whether or not I am moving toward smaller books because my brain needs a break from hefty mystery novels, the fact remains that the books on my nightstand (or rather in the unwieldy floor pile by the bed) are all fairly short right now. I’ve mentioned two of them here recently: I’m re-reading Justo Gonzalez’ The Changing Shape of Church History and I’m reading Macrina Wiederkehr’s A Tree Full of Angels.

Both of these books take me back to earlier seasons in my life. Gonzalez is the author of The Story of Christianity, my first real foray into the study of church history seventeen years ago. I will always feel indebted that he was my introduction to the discipline; he writes beautiful, readable historical chronicles. I was introduced to Wiederkehr even longer ago, when I worked for the Cabrini sisters (it’s been over 21 years now since I started my four and a half year stint with Cabrini, and I’m still learning from the time I spent with them). I’m pretty sure most of the Wiederkehr I’ve read was in excerpt, brought to prayer rooms on photocopied pages – the sisters and lay people I worked with there always brought beautiful poems and snippets of prose to prayer and meditation time. I’ve had one line floating in my head for two decades now, which I’m fairly certain is Wiederkehr’s, though I’m not sure of the context: “This is a trust song, Lord. I am in your hands like clay.” (If anybody knows where she says this, I’d love to be reminded.)

I’m also reading – or maybe it’s re-reading, I’m not quite sure – C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory. I would have told you that of the five essays included in that volume, I had definitely read two or maybe three of them. I go back to the title essay, “The Weight of Glory,” probably once a year. This summer I decided to move straight on from there and read everything else in order, and so far I’m remembering them all, so perhaps this is a re-read. No matter. Everything Lewis wrote is worth reading and then chewing on again.

Lewis is one of the few writers in my life that I actually sometimes wake up feeling I need to read. It happened again this morning. I find myself thinking “it sure would be nice to spend some time with Jack this morning,” and I reach for whatever book happens to be handy (I’m blessed we have a lot of his books on our shelves, and there are a lot more right down the road at the seminary library). This morning, Jack wanted to talk with me about “Learning in War-Time,” and I was happy to listen again. The slightly browning edges of the page and the note underneath the title “A sermon preached in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, Autumn, 1939,” gave me a moment’s pause, as it suddenly occurred to me that this voice that feels so fresh first spoke these words seventy-five years ago. It’s strange that a mere one-line description of the sermon itself could move me so much, but it somehow made the whole thing feel more rich and real as I sat there on my bed and the morning sun slanted silver through the blinds. As I read, I found myself feeling like I’d slipped into a pew of the church, right behind a lady wearing a WWII era hat. When I left the pages, no doubt I would find myself traipsing down an English road lined with trees whose leaves were turning red and gold. 
 
In the “slim little volume” category (sorry, I couldn’t resist), I’m also reading More Baths Less Talking, Nick Hornby’s witty collection of literary columns. This was a Christmas gift from my sister last year, and it’s been mostly sitting on my desk intriguing me with its title. Not long ago I found myself drawn to it on the new non-fiction shelves at the library (“what a funny title!”) and then realized that I’d thought that before and the book was at home on my desk. It’s my first dip into Hornby’s work and it’s delightful. He has a droll sense of humor and an insightful way of cutting right to the heart of a book and what it meant to him.

I’m re-reading Meindert DeJong’s The Wheel on the School. I decided recently that I wanted to get back to my literary devotional project, and saw that I had broken off (sometime last year) in the midst of ideas for a devotional based on this book. At that time it was fresh in my mind because I’d just read it aloud, for the second time, to the sweet girl. I thought I’d better give it a quick re-read to refresh my memory, since my notes were not entirely jogging my brain. But it’s such a beautiful story that reading it quickly feels almost impossible. I’m also having that interesting experience of realizing how different it is to read a book silently (and just to yourself) after having gotten to know it while reading it aloud.

My quest to read everything Gary D. Schmidt has written continues with his early novel Anson’s Way. I’m not very far into it yet, so I will probably take this one (along with the new P.D. James) to the peninsula when we head out on our few-day vacation soon.

A Tree Full of Angels

Something made me open up Macrina Wiederkehr's A Tree Full of Angels earlier today.  Her prayerful insights seemed like balm to my tired heart today.

I've read bits of this book before, but not for a long time, and so I decided to begin at the beginning. In just a few pages, she has already reminded me of several things:

• that we need to open our eyes to unwrap the gifts of the ordinary (xiv)
• that "Glory comes streaming from the table of daily life" (xiv)
• to remember to ask the important question: "Am I too busy with my own agenda to let God's agenda bless me?" (xiv)
• that reading the saints can sometimes speak to the ache in our hearts (xv)
• that we are "poor storm-tossed creatures, yet precious stones" (2)
• that we are creatures of both "littleness and greatness...frailty and...splendor...poverty and...wealth" (2)
• that home is the place where our name "becomes precious" (2)
• that the "hearts of friends" can become home places for us (4)
• that "the Church is that home into which I have been initiated, in which I have been anointed, healed, forgiven, nourished, and nurtured" (4)
• that the Church is broken home because you and I are broken, and we make up the church: "we have to accept both the burden and the grace of being Church" (5) 

 So thankful to have picked up this book today.

"Let There Be Light..."

“Let there be light in all the nightmare places,

in the millrace of license, in the stifled room;

let there be joy in starved and leaden faces,

in charred or sodden furrows, where no tears bloom.”

That’s the first stanza of a poem called “Benediction” by William R. Mitchell. I read it for the first time several days ago, and can’t get it (the whole poem, but that first line especially) out of my mind and heart.

This week has been a week of prayer for our broken and hurting world. Everywhere we turn there is news of violence. The radio and my Facebook feed keep sending me to the only places where I can begin to make any sense of the suffering and madness in the world: the Scriptures, and my knees. Yesterday I prayed my way through Isaiah 49, feeling every verse so powerfully and personally on behalf of our suffering brothers and sisters that it almost felt like the ink on my Bible pages must still be wet.

I was working yesterday morning when S. woke up late (summer tired, and dealing with allergies and an antihistamine that makes her drowsy) and stumbled into the living room. We settled on the couch together to begin our usual morning prayers. Our first words in prayer together every morning are “Lord Jesus Christ, be with us today. Help us in all we think, and do, and say” followed by the singing together of “This is the day that the Lord has made.”

We were into the line “we will rejoice and be glad in it” when I glanced up and saw, a few feet away on my computer screen, a news headline about children being killed in Iraq. I averted my eyes (not to block out the reality, but to try to stay in the moment with S.) and returned to our prayer and song with a lump in my throat. Part of me wanted to scream out: “How can I rejoice and be glad in THIS day, Lord! How can I rejoice when your children are dying?”

Yet we are still called to rejoice, even as we are called to mourn and lament. And the two are not always so far apart.

Later in the day (after talking and prayer as a family) S. confessed something that I appreciated for its honesty. She said, “sometimes it’s hard to feel like all of this is real and happening when it’s not happening here.” She’s right, though most of us aren’t nearly so honest. It’s hard to feel someone else’s suffering when we are safe and secure. It’s hard to feel someone else’s suffering because when we let ourselves feel it, it hurts. It’s hard to feel it, because we don’t know what we can do, and we feel powerless.

But we’re not powerless. We have prayer.

So we pray for ourselves, that we would properly mourn, lament, and rejoice in this broken but still-blessed world, and we pray for those who suffer, that they might find release, deliverance, comfort, courage, strength, and whatever else that God knows they need.

“Thy kingdom come” takes on more urgency in our prayers in times like these. Truly, Lord Jesus, come and make your presence known. Come and take your throne.

We pray today for Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Nigeria, Syria, Sudan and South Sudan – and so many other places.

The final stanza in the Mitchell poem:

“Say for me, God, their blessing I am seeking;

Lord, decree for them the sun, and Jesus speak aright

my scattered syllables – for past my yearning, past

  my speaking,

I have been stammering, let there be light.”

The Changing Shape of Church History (Notes on Intro)

Several years ago I read a little book by Justo Gonzalez that felt like a real conversation changer for me. It was called The Changing Shape of Church History. Conversation changers are what I call those books that shape my thinking enough that I begin to talk about things differently than I used to. This book has not just changed the way I've thought about church history, and the church in the world today, but how I've taught it.

I have gone back to parts of this book so many times that I've decided to re-read it, but this time through I want to take notes. Yesterday I dove back into the introduction, so thought I would post my notes on that today. I'm summarizing, but also adding some of my own thoughts and glosses as I go.

• In the introduction, Gonzalez makes the claim that "the entire field of church history is changing" (2) and then says, someone is bound to ask, "how is it possible for the past to change?" (2)
• He makes the obvious but important (and I think often overlooked) point that "history is not the same as the past. The past is never directly accessible to us. The past comes to us through the mediation of interpretation. And that interpreted past is history." (2)
• He provides the useful image of a dialogue. When we speak with another person, that person is not directly accessible to us. We have their "words, gestures, and tones" (2) and we receive those things and interpret what they are attempting to communicate. When we are in an authentic dialogue, we do our best to respect the "givenness" of the other person's words. But we also have no choice but to "hear and interpret those words" from our own perspective, which is shaped and colored by our own unique experiences. Dialogue is really impossible, he points out, and yet we engage in it all the time -- and it forms the basis of our social life. (Just think about the last time you tried to have a meaningful "conversation" on Facebook, minus all the visual and body language clues he just referenced, and think about how hard real dialogue can be!)
• Now that you have the image of a dialogue firmly in mind, "think about history as a dialogue. It is a dialogue in which it is not only the past that addresses us, but also we who address the past." (2) In other words, we're not passive observers -- we speak with the past, we ask it questions. And the answers we get from it depend in large part on what we're asking. 
• So it makes sense to realize that church history changes, as the church itself changes.
• History is pertinent "not that it is what happened in the past, but rather that it is what happened in the past as seen from our present and toward the future we imagine." (3) (Keep that one in mind -- and think how, as the people of God, we're called to live faithfully in the present, inspired and encouraged and deeply connected to the past, as we walk boldly into the future that God has not only imagined for us, but the future he can actually bring to pass.)
• So why is the history of the church changing? You might think it's just because "scholars have new sources" (3) but there's more to it than that. It's because "the church and the world are changing. And these are changes that we can only begin to understand as we look at them in historical perspective." (3)
• He goes on to highlight changes seen in the world around the time of 9/11 (which happened a few months before he penned this intro...the book was published in 2002). 9/11 reminded us the map of the world was changing. 9/11 revealed to us the shared vulnerability of humankind, even in places/centers of power which we might have thought were invulnerable. As we reflected on what happened, we also became aware "that the world is not really as secular as Western modernity had thought, that many nations are no longer culturally or religiously homogeneous, that events in the past that many of us did not consider important still have great power to shape the future" (4).
• And changes in the way world history is perceived and written about will also have an impact on how we think and write about the history of the church. 

More notes to come.